From feticide to invasion. When I saw this on the list, I was a bit surprised. The Old Testament is filled with warfare, which is expected as the Middle East was in a strategic position, and thus quite desirable. Besides larger civilizations such as Egypt, Assyria and Babylon trying to secure it for somewhat of a buffer zone, or even just allying with local tribes to have a hold on the area, many smaller tribes were also vying for the land.
The book of Judges, where Barker takes this verse out of, is a great example of the continual warfare that we see in the area. Why he picked these verses, Judges 18:1-28, I’m not quite sure. But we will dive into it anyway.
First, a brief synopsis. The verse begins with the Tribe of Dan trying to find a place to settle, as they hadn’t come into an inheritance among the Tribes of Israel. So they went to the priest and asked him to inquire with God to see if their journey to find a place to call home would be successful.
The priest answered that yes, the journey has God’s approval. Hearing that, they cook what Micah had made, and went to the city of Laish, against a people at peace and secure. The Danites would attack them, and then burn down their city. The Danities would then rebuild the city, with a new name of Dan, and then settle there.
Barker concludes by saying that the Canaanites were not evildoers, but that the Israelites were invaders.
There is a lot to unpack here. So let’s begin with some foundational ideas. First, who inhabited Laish.
Laish, or Leshem as it known in the book of Joshua, was a city that was in the extreme northern part of Canaan. The time period we are looking at is the Late Bronze Age, and the beginning of the Iron Age. This was a pretty tumultuous time in Canaan.
When we are looking at Canaan, we are looking at an area that was largely these independent city-states. Political unity among these city-states really only occurred by military conquest, and that was generally by foreign powers.
One of the major foreign powers here was the Egyptians. Leading up to around 1550 BC, Egypt and the city-states of Canaan had more of commercial relation. Egypt often had an overabundance of food, while Canaan didn’t, and Canaan had more access to raw materials. Canaan also supplied Egyptians with the ability to participate in international trade.
This all changed around 1550 BC, when Egypt began expanding it’s political and military domination into Canaan. The cause for this new focus was two fold. First, it was part of their war against the Hykos peoples. They Egyptians had driven the Hykos out of Egypt, but they continued their campaign into Canaan, where they were set on breaking the power of the Hykos allies in the area. Coupled with this was a push to secure the old center of Asiatic trade.
In 1468 BC, this came to a climax at Megiddo, where the Egyptians defeated a large coalition of Canaanite cities. This allowed the Egyptians to effectively take control of Canaan, making Canaan something like a territory. Egyptian garrisons would continue to be stationed at key places in northern Canaan in order to help fight off possible evasions. And there would be a number of attempts at invasions, most notably by the Hittites.
This outside danger of invasion was coupled with revolts among the cities and tribes in Canaan. We know one of these troublesome cities was Laish, as they are mentioned among those cursed in the Egyptian Execration texts, or Proscription Lists, which listed enemies of the Pharaoh.
The people of Laish had reason to be unfriendly with the Egyptians. When Thutmose III began his campaign to take Canaan into Egyptian control, Laish is among those cities that were conquered by the Pharaoh. It appears they would the continue to pose problems for Egypt, as they preferred their independence. That and they chose to ally themselves with the Sidonians, who were Phoenicians. As a note, it is possible that the people of Laish were not Canaanites, but Phoenician.
Because of the danger posed to northern Canaan, where Laish was situated, both by the Egyptians and kingdoms like the Hittites, Laish found a reason to fortify themselves, and that led them to having a rather impressive defense system.
This is where the Tribe of Dan comes in. In Judges 18:1, we are told that the Tribe of Dan had no land of their own. Reading through Judges and Joshua, we know that this wasn’t always the case. The tribe once had a territory in the coastal lowlands near the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol. But they were forced out of that area by the Amorites, or Philistines. In fact, in the preceding narrative, we get the story of Samson, who was a Danite, and we see this ongoing struggle with the Philistines.
Being a conquered people, the Danites became a nomadic tribe, that was looking for a new home. The new land they found was Laish.
Laish was an ideal city for the Danites to conquer. Their closest allies were the Sidonians, but they were pretty isolated from them. They also didn’t have any allies among the local peoples, so attacking them would have been straight forward.
Now, the text does state that Laish was at peace and secured. That doesn’t imply they had done nothing wrong though. They after all were seen as an enemy of Egypt and caused problems there. But right then, they weren’t in a war with anyone else, and that was largely because Egypt has secured some peace in the area through a mutual respect and understanding between them and the Hittites.
Quick side step. So while the Hittites and Egyptians would wage war over Canaan, neither side would make massive gains. Instead, they would reach a stalemate that led both sides to realize that a continued fight would largely be pointless and not worth the cost. They would remain allies until about 1200 BC, and shortly after that, Egypt would collapse in Asia.
It is this same time period, with the fall of the Egyptian Empire in the area, and the Hittites, that the Tribe of Dan conquered the city of Laish. It wouldn’t be long after that that the Assyrians would then conquer the area. So yes, at that specific moment, Laish was at peace, but if we look at the wider context, it was a short lived peace.
Part of the reason the people of Laish felt at peace though comes back to the fact that they had an impressive defense system. They were no strangers to war, and because of that, they fortified themselves. They made them feel as if they were secure, and in turn, it made them drop their guard.
All of this made them the perfect target for an attack. We don’t really see a massacre being stated here though. Instead, we have one army approaching a town, that also had an army, and they had a battle by swords. Nothing really out of the ordinary here. There is the mention that the town was then burnt down, but archaeological records don’t support that. There is a clear change in occupation that can be seen through the archaeological record, but that’s really it.
What Barker seems to take offense with is that God is said to have given His approval, but what is God supposedly approving of? It doesn’t appear to be a massacre, but instead an attempt to explore the land.
Chapter 8 begins with five Danite men being sent out to spy and explore the land. These five men meet a priest, and that’s when they have the priest ask God if their journey will be successful. That mission, or journey was just to explore the land.
During that time, they do spot the city of Laish, but no where are we told that God approves of them then leading an army there to massacre them. Instead, we see the spies telling the Tribe of Dan how easy it will be to conquer them.
Now sure, with their victory of Laish, the Tribe of Dan most likely saw God as having had a hand in it, but then again, they saw God having a hand in everything, including their previous downfall. But if we look at the text from a historical perspective, instead of taking a literal interpretation, we can see that really what we have here is just a small narrative that falls into a much larger history of peoples being conquered in Canaan. That’s just the history of Canaan as a whole.
There is also a failure in the logic of the argument Barker portrays though. If God wanted the Tribe of Dan to have a place to live, it would have been much easier to have just kept the Tribe in their original area, instead of having the Philistines push them out. The Danites were also a group of people who did nothing wrong, but were invaded and dispersed.
Just one final point, after looking at the text, there is no suggestion that the people of Laish were eliminated. They were conquered, but nothing is said of what happens to the people as a whole. On the other hand, we are told that the Tribe of Dan will be forced out of the area.
The issue here then is that Barker is taking a passage out of context, both the literary context and historical context, in order to portray God in one manner, when the passage as a whole is about what the Tribe of Dan is doing because they want to find a new home.
